by Catherine Watson

To the end of his days, my father insisted that my travels were nothing more than “escapism.” Whenever I said I was going somewhere alone, he accused me of running away, of being “avoidant.” It didn’t matter whether it was Europe or the movies.
“What is wrong with you?” he once snarled at me [...]

by Eliot Stein

“Lake Como touches the limit of the permissibly picturesque; but Atitlán is Como with the additional embellishments of several immense volcanoes. It is really too much of a good thing.”
— Aldus Huxley, Beyond the Mexique Bay, 1934
Where do we come from?
Huxley may not have realized it at the time, but when [...]

by Kevin McCaughey
I brought my ukulele on our Caribbean cruise.  Every afternoon my mother and I sang old standards in the cabin, while my father reclined on his bed, reading Robert Ludlum and wagging the book to the beat when we got to a rousing number like “Five-Foot Two.”
It was December of 2002, and my [...]

by Gaye Brown
I wasn’t sure what my children expected when I booked our Homeland Tour to South Korea. More self aware than many teens their age, they were adolescents nonetheless. Which is to say, given to opacity. My daughter, a priestess of Asian pop from manga and animé to gaming and “J-rock” claimed she was [...]

by Marianne Dresser
Hazy late-afternoon sunlight filtered through the pines, revealing an undisturbed layer of duff on the path. The taxis from the train station had brought our group up the mountain until the paved road gave way to this gravel path; from there, we walked.
Craving a bit of solitude after a few days in Tokyo, [...]

by Matthew Link
Death never takes a vacation away from us. It’s tied to our feet like an arrogant shadow wherever we go, as a constant reminder of all the things we’ve left behind.
And who wants to visit death on vacation? Believe it or not, a visit to Ghana’s coffin makers is on most tourists’ itineraries. [...]

By Tom Cheche
***
Shade kept us from seeing the sign. The narrow country lane, devoid of traffic, meandered through farmland of the Cotinten bathed in glorious autumn sun, highlighting roadside fields of squat, manicured apple trees but intensifying darkness in the occasional stretch through a palisade of looming shade trees. It was a rough board nailed [...]

By Peter Delevett
It was Christmastime in Germany, oom-pah music and the scent of bratwurst wafting through the air.
And my wife wanted to go to Dachau.
To me, visiting the Munich suburb where some 40,000 people died in Nazi Germany’s first and longest-running concentration camp didn’t sound like a very cheery Christmas outing.
I know how that sounds. [...]

By Lenny Karpman
Faces, tattoos, and empty mothers’ arms flailing after lost children flashed before my eyes. I sobbed. From deeper within me, the sobs crescendoed into the wail of a wounded animal. A comforting hand massaged my shoulder. A voice told me in Yiddish that it was good to cry here, that this was “our [...]

By Stacey Tuel
“Traveling is one of the hopeful symptoms of life.” – Agnes Repplier
What is it about traveling that gives us hope for our own lives? Can traveling reveal to us secrets unknown about ourselves? Is it possible to travel across the world, into an unfamiliar land, surround ourselves with unfamiliar faces and words, and [...]